


when you fall, you fly

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Coffee Shop NOT AU, Coffee Shops, F/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 11:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2189217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint’s never made anything other than drip coffee in his life, but he figures there’s a first time for everything.</p><p>(or, the coffee shop not!AU in which making coffee is harder than it appears, Clint has never really had a normal job before, and eventually people find out what he's been up to.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	when you fall, you fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkvoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/gifts).



> Inspired by the following: _Coffee shop NOT AU. Post Avengers, pre Winter Soldier, The Avengers have moved into Stark Tower and everyone is busy with their own lives. Clint, meanwhile has been suspended and feels useless. There's a coffee shop on a lower floor in the tower that he notices being understaffed or having someone quit when he's exploring and this, Clint feels, he can be qualified for._
> 
> This got long (and probably could have been longer, but I stopped it from getting irrationally out of hand.) I loved exploring this idea, though, and I will take any excuse to write post!Avengers Clint. (Also I am apparently incapable of writing anything that doesn't turn angsty, but, post!Avengers Clint. Enough said.)
> 
> Title from Neil Gaiman's _The Sandman, Vol. 6_

The world changed after New York.

At least, that’s what everyone says. Clint doesn’t see it, not really, because New York is built for this sort of thing – this “rough and tumble” lifestyle where things can go to shit in one second and then be fixed in five. Subways are back and running in less than a week, the debris cornered and cleared in two, and sure, the skyline looks a little more frail than usual but who could be concerned with that when the news stations are already talking about plans to construct marble statue memorials in the shape of his face, when photos of ruined buildings are being uploaded on Instagram and Facebook with the hashtag #AliensAteManhattan2012?

(Tony tells him that one, because Natasha took away his smart phone privileges “for your own good” the day she came back to the Tower and found him watching YouTube videos of Loki speeding through midtown Manhattan on the back of an alien carrier.)

They say the world changed after New York, but that’s a lie, really, because things quickly go back to normal in as much as they were ever really _normal_. Tony goes back to his mechanics, to his tinkering and to Pepper and to being the face of their mess. Steve takes off on his motorcycle, comes back and then leaves again, and he isn’t questioned because they figure he deserves some time to adjust after all of this. Bruce goes back to his science, to being a constant presence in Tony’s makeshift lab except this time there’s no rising tension over whether or not he’s going to snap and bring down the whole structure in a fit of green - just a lot of explosions that happen mostly past midnight.

No one’s sure where Thor goes, but they assume something about Asgard and Jane, and the fact that they don’t hear from him for a while tells them as much. Clint spends a lot of time sitting on the roof, in the spot he’s carved out for himself that’s just hidden enough from the world to be considered discreet, staring down a moving picture of memories that he can’t make himself forget, while wishing he could fly or run away or at least walk down the goddamn block without feeling like the entire world is caving in on him.

And that’s the problem, really. _There’s_ _nowhere to fucking go_.

He receives his suspension notice via Natasha via Fury not 48 hours after he’s slept off the effects of schwarma and a dislocated shoulder and persistent blue pupils, and he’s not surprised in the least when he reads the words on the paper, meets Natasha’s watchful gaze. She expects him to fight her on it, he realizes, noticing the way her fingers flex almost motionlessly by her side, the way her leg bends at the knee, indicating a readiness for retaliation when he screams and yells and tries to deny his (for lack of a better word) sentencing.

He doesn’t fight, though, and he doesn’t yell, and he doesn’t give her a reason to be tough with him. Instead, he takes the typed memo, folds it up, and puts it in the back pocket of his jeans.

“You wanna watch some _Brady Bunch_ reruns?” he asks after a too long silence has stretched between them, and the look he receives in response isn’t quite _shut up, Barton_ but it’s not _we’ll talk about this later_ either, and so that’s how Clint ends up spending the first night of his life post aliens and post job suspension – watching Marcia Brady whine about people reading her diary while Natasha curls up into his side, one hand resting lightly on the part of his stomach where she once gave him a permanent scar.

 

***

 

Just because Clint doesn’t object to his punishment straight off doesn’t mean he bothers to talk himself out of marching into Fury’s office first thing the next morning, sneaking out of the Tower under the guise of taking an early walk.

“I was waiting for you to show up,” the Director intones without turning around when he more or less barges in without knocking, and Clint stands ramrod straight in front of the desk, focusing his pupils at the strip of black eye patch stretching across the back of Fury’s head.

“I want to contest.”

At his words, Fury finally turns around. “You wanna _contest_ your suspension?” he asks, leaning his elbows on the table, arching an eyebrow as if he thinks Clint might require another dose of cognitive recalibration. Clint shakes his head.

“No, I want to contest the _conditions_ of my suspension,” he returns bluntly, removing the paper from his back pocket and tossing it onto the table. Fury looks down and picks it up with one hand as if it’s one of Clint’s dirty kitchen rags that he uses in his apartment, before pushing back and then up in his chair.

“The conditions of your suspension aren’t up to me,” he says finally, handing the paper back to Clint. “They’re up to the Medical team who is responsible for clearing you when they think that you can handle being in the field again after having an Asgardian psychopath in your brain. As your direct supervisor, I’m only responsible for making sure that you adhere to those rules.”

“And what’s going to happen to Natasha?” Clint asks before he can stop himself, as Fury regards him with a one eyed stare, as if this is the one question he’s anticipated since Clint walked in the door (and, Clint thinks, it probably is).

“She’ll be reassigned – temporarily,” he adds, ahead of the objection Clint already feels on the tip of his tongue. “I may be dumb, but I’m not dumb enough to permanently break up one of the best teams S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever put together.”

He wants to scream, because that would be the easy thing to do, because that would allow him to at least release some of the tension he feels building up inside his chest. In lieu of making a scene that he knows will only make his case worse, however, he bites down onto his lower lip, feeling a little like he’s lost a battle that he didn’t even know he wanted to win in the first place, and Fury sighs again as he picks up some papers from his desk.

“Go home, Barton. Take some time for yourself. Volunteer. Make yourself useful.”

 _Useful_. Clint thinks the only time he’s really ever been _useful_ is when he’s been on the other end of a comm unit, shooting arrows at anything that poses a threat, but he knows a dismissal when he hears it, and so he turns on his heel and walks a little too bitterly out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

 

***

 

After his talk with Fury, Clint does decide to take the walk that he had lied about when he left the Tower, winding around the streets of the West Village without really thinking about it until he’s routed himself back in the general direction of uptown, walking from 14th Street to 42nd. By the time he reaches the door to Stark Tower, he’s sweating, tired, and there’s a blister on the back of his heel that shoots pain up his ankle every time he moves.

He can wield knives and spar with the best of any fighter, but Clint’s never been good at being stealth, at moving quietly in places – that’s Natasha’s forte, with her small boned body as opposed to his large hands and bulky frame. Still, he manages to somehow slip inside the elevator and bypass the common room where Tony and Bruce are deep in conversation regarding something Clint doesn’t feel he has the right or the mental capacity to understand, making his way to the guest bedroom more or less undetected.

As soon as he’s shut the door on his own privacy, he kicks off his shoes and strips himself of his soaked clothing, stepping into the too complicated shower that he still feels awkward using. Despite the fact that his body is radiating heat from his walk, the warm spray feels refreshing against his back, and Clint grinds his foot into the floor where his blister is starting to take shape, allowing bits of blood and skin to come off on the bathmat as he runs a hand through his hair.

“This is for your own good,” comes a voice from the other end of the door, and Clint makes a face without thinking about it, reaching over to turn the water off.

“If it’s for my own good, then why do I feel so shitty?” he counters, wrapping a towel around his waist and opening the door. Natasha’s standing on the other side, arms crossed over her chest, strands of grown out red trailing towards her shoulder where it’s almost long enough to reach.

“Because you’re being forced into time off against your will, and I know a little about what it’s like to be shut up like that,” she says in a no nonsense voice, shoving a bottle and a piece of paper into his hand. Clint furrows his brow, holding it up against the light.

“What are these?”

“Your prescription. I picked them up this morning,” Natasha replies and Clint glowers, pushing them back into her grip.

“I don’t need pills,” he says hotly, grabbing a pair of boxers from the duffel he’s still refused to unpack (a habit, he tells himself, a circus habit, because right now they have no home and they don’t know if they ever will have a home again). He feels her eyes staring a hole into the back of his head as he finishes toweling off, pulling a tee shirt over his body.

“What?”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “You seriously just fed me the line ‘I don’t need pills.’”

“Well, I don’t,” Clint repeats, sitting down on the bed. “I need some time to get my head together and maybe a few more cold showers and some sleep. Not some mind numbing drugs.”

“And you’re seriously stupid if you think that poor explanation is getting you off the hook,” Natasha retorts with a hard edge to her voice that he knows basically means “ _I’ll force feed them to you every day like a child if I have to_.” She moves to stand in front of him, dropping the bottle into his lap, and Clint sighs.

“Did they tell you who they’re reassigning you to?” he asks after a beat, twirling the bottle around in his hands and Natasha startles a little, blinking quickly, like she hasn’t expected him to know this piece of information that Clint realizes she’s carefully and conveniently forgotten to tell him.

“No,” she responds cautiously. “Not yet. I think they’re still trying to work out everything that’s happened.” She sits down on the bed, pressing her legs against his. “But as soon as I find out, I’ll let you know.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly, trying to figure out why he all of a sudden feels so off, like there’s an anxiety inside of him that he can’t exactly quell. It’s not like they haven’t worked separately before: being solo was a staple of their life before they were brought together, and even recently, he’s been okay with being sent off to places for a few days at a time without having her at his back. There’s something that nags at him about this particular development, though, and Natasha seems to sense his apprehension, tugging at his hand when he goes silent.

“Come on. You want to watch a movie?”

Clint shakes his head. “I don’t want to go downstairs,” he says tiredly, thinking of Bruce and Tony in the living room, and suddenly the thought of being social seems far too tiring. Natasha gets up and walks to the other side of the bed, lying down on top of the covers.

“We’re not going downstairs. Tony said he got our Netflix hooked up to the guest room, so we should be able to access everything from here.” She pats the spot next to her, her eyes gentle where her voice is more matter-of-fact, and Clint hesitates for a fraction longer than he thinks he should before climbing in and curling into her side automatically in the position that they know best. Natasha scrolls through the streaming options on their account, and eventually they end up settling on Leslie Nielsen’s _Airplane_ which Natasha claims to have never seen (“who would make a parody about terrorizing an airplane?” she had asked incredulously when she heard the premise) and the rest of the day is spent with Clint quoting parts of the movie in tandem with her objections to the believability of the film, and he considers that it’s probably one of the best afternoons he’s had in a long time.

 

***

 

Clint has to hand it to Tony – the rapidness in which Stark Industries (and by default, the place that most of them are now starting to call their temporary home) bounced back was nothing short of impressive.

In the months following the attack, the renovations happen quicker than usual, though the ruined exterior of the balcony area stays untouched for reasons Clint thinks he might actually understand. What he doesn’t understand are the numerous businesses that begin to take up residence on the lower levels of the Tower, thanks to some excellent PR work from Pepper that has somehow made the location more desirable than ever, despite the fact it was essentially ground zero for an alien attack.

Clint and Natasha move in on the top floor and make their guest bedroom less of a temporary situation and more of a semi-permanent one, because that’s apparently what you do in the wake of being essentially thrown off your feet by monsters and magic. Steve takes a room two levels below them, Bruce takes the basement, and the whole scenario feels to Clint both cozy and unfamiliar at the same time, like the hotels he used to live in when he was on the run after the circus, moving from place to place and trying to stay under the radar without any real money to his name.

Fury graciously lets Natasha have a three-week leave of absence before she has to start reporting back for active duty, and Clint’s grateful that with all the comings and goings there’s at least one thing in his life that, for the moment, he can count as stable. With most of the others being so independent with their time, Clint doesn’t feel too badly about being a little scarce, and as it is, there are more than enough instances where they both find they can ease out of a conversation or a group movie night without feeling entirely guilty about being antisocial.

On the evening of Natasha’s last night before she has to return for work, he sets up a movie marathon where they decide to watch _Pirates of the Caribbean_ , because Natasha has only seen the first one and Clint’s only seen the last one, and also because unlike _Alien_ or _Contact_ (two of Tony’s suggestions that Natasha had shot down before he even understood why) it’s just mindless enough for both of them to recognize the thin line between pretend and reality.

“One more day?” he asks as Johnny Depp flings a sword and takes on a giant squid in the middle of the ocean, and Natasha makes a small noise into his arm, sitting up slowly.

“Clint, I gotta go back,” she says with as much gentleness as she can muster. “You know that.”

“Yeah,” he admits, because he does know, that’s the thing, but it doesn’t make it any easier to comprehend that the world is going to keep moving and he’s going to be left sitting on the couch in its wake, watching bad movie sequels and eating popcorn out of a big purple bowl while doing absolutely nothing to keep himself functional. Natasha frowns.

“Hey, what about volunteering? Have you looked into that? I’m sure Pepper knows some places.”

“Yeah,” he repeats a little warily, because the thing is, he just doesn’t think he’s cut out for stuff like cleaning debris and sorting piles of clothing, and he doesn’t bother to tell Natasha that Steve’s already tried that tactic, or that Tony’s invited him into his lab on more than one occasion, offering to show him ways that he can retool or fix his arrows. (And it’s not that Clint’s trying to be rude or that he doesn’t have an interest in team-type things, it’s just that he hasn’t felt entirely comfortable listening to the billionaire drone on about electromagnetism and other science terms that he doesn’t feel like he has any right to talk about, and so he’s sidestepped the offers with about as much politeness as he can manage.)

“What’s wrong?”

Her voice is demanding more than questioning, and he drags his eyes away from the television to meet her gaze, sees the way her face asks what she’s not bothering to verbalize.

“I just don’t know how to make myself useful,” he admits with a shrug, grabbing the bottle of pills off the table in front of him and shaking two out into the palm of his hand. “I was never good at sitting still.”

Natasha regards him carefully as he downs the pills dry, moving the popcorn bowl off of her lap and setting it on the floor.

“Well, I could’ve told you that,” she responds, curling her fingers into his hand, resting her lips against the hollow of his neck and kissing him lightly.

 

***

 

On the first day of Natasha’s return to S.H.I.E.L.D., she wakes with the sun and comes back late in the evening, crawling into bed long after the world is asleep except he’s always awake because he can’t remember what it feels like to have uninterrupted rest.

“Do you want me to tell you about it?” she asks, giving him full, unequivocal choice to know the things she’s been told to do without him, the places she’s been assigned to run off to and the people she’s been asked to detain. He refuses and she doesn’t push him, instead just says “okay” in a voice that sounds a little sad, falling asleep with her head on his shoulder and one leg wrapped around his waist, a mirror of the way he once held her when everything was new and scary and there was nothing else to cling to.

 

***

 

After almost a month without steady work or a schedule that doesn’t involve moping around the Tower or watching bad television or going for a run, Clint finally starts to understand the feeling of what he thinks his therapist might describe as “stir crazy.”

He isn’t sure why he thought the whole thing would be a passing phase – Tony being too busy with his science, Bruce and Steve being too absent with their socializing, Natasha being too tied up with S.H.I.E.L.D. Although he doesn’t want to know about what she’s doing, Clint tries to understand at least that part of it, the notion that with his suspension, Strike Team: Delta was technically down to one – and even with all of Natasha’s skills, he knew that required more traveling and more problem fixing than a single person could manage. Still, when he maxes out the watch list on their Netflix queue, he finds that he’s unsure what to do with himself in the wake of absolutely no one being around to spend any time with him.

That’s when he finds the coffee shop.

It’s an accident, really. He takes the elevator to the ground floor to check out some of the newer businesses on another morning that finds him awake before five and unable to sleep, stopping in to buy a pastry and intending to make a stink on his way out about the terribly understaffed service. That is, until he sees the crooked sign taped to the glass door.

_Now Hiring. Help Wanted. Inquire Within._

Well, okay then.

He’s not quite sure what compels him to turn on his heel and march back to the counter, demanding more than requesting an application, but fifteen minutes later he’s filled out most of the required spaces on the form and has talked to the manager and _how convenient that he lives upstairs and is looking for some employment, could he possibly be available tomorrow morning for training?_

Clint’s never made anything other than drip coffee in his life, but he figures there’s a first time for everything.

 

***

 

He comes to realize that making coffee when you’re not dumping some grounds into a filter and pressing a button is harder than it appears.

Clint finds this piece of information out the hard way, and he’s pretty sure the only reason that he doesn’t get fired straight off the bat is because he’s one of the only people who can put in regular hours plus overtime, and that alone is a boost to the fledgling store. They have him mostly working the cash registers, and let him use the espresso machine when the rush of people hits more of a lull, and by the end of the first week he’s made at least four successful drinks and only spilled syrup on his uniform once, so he considers it somewhat a victory.

It’s the first real job he’s ever had, minus the odd jobs he worked at the circus, minus S.H.I.E.L.D., and he’s not sure if he’s even good at it but it keeps him busy and makes the days go by faster, and so he keeps coming back even when he thinks he might as well just up and quit. He stashes his uniform in the closet of one of the unused guest bedrooms where he figures no one will bother to look, and Natasha gives him strange glances when he starts crawling into bed later and later, when he doesn’t hide the exhaustion radiating throughout his body, but she never asks him where he’s spending his time and he doesn’t dare tell her.

Because it’s not like making coffee is something commendable or something to brag about.

He’s a fucking _Avenger_ , for God’s sake.

 

***

 

Tony finds out first (of course Tony finds out first) and corners him when he’s about to leave for the third week of his second morning shift.

“Seriously? A _barista_?”

“Do you mind?” Clint grumbles as he presses down on the toaster, noticing how the billionaire has conveniently blocked the path between the door and the counter. “I’m late.”

Tony grins, folding his arms and motioning towards the elevator. “Not at all, birdie, not at all.”

Clint ignores the jab, hurrying past while shoving a half-cooked waffle in his mouth before rounding suddenly on his heel.

“Look, just don’t – don’t tell Natasha, okay?”

Tony snorts. “What, you think I want to die? Don’t worry. Secret’s safe with me.” He grins again. “You go do what you do.”

 _And what is it that I do_? Clint wants to ask bitterly as he slips out of the kitchen and into the elevator, resting his head against the wall after the doors have closed. _What is it any of us do? What the fuck am_ I _supposed to do, except make terrible cups of coffee on a minimum wage salary_?

He still doesn’t have an answer by the time the elevator has reached the ground floor, but he puts on his best smile anyway, and punches in three minutes past seven.

 

***

 

Bruce finds out, Clint assumes, from Tony, and he thankfully manages to avoid that particular interaction even though he’s pretty sure that out of all of them, that one might have been the easiest to deal with. Steve finds out purely by accident after coming in from a run right when Clint is getting off of his late shift, doesn’t do anything except give him a small smile and a clap on the shoulder, eyeing him up and down as they wait for the elevator together.

“So. Making coffee isn’t all that easy, is it?”

And Clint laughs, really laughs, maybe for the first time in awhile, because trust _Captain fucking America_ to act like it’s no big deal that you can’t bounce back from a war that you never had a chance of winning in the first place.

 

***

 

And then there’s Natasha.

He hasn’t let himself go up on the roof since a few weeks after they sent Loki and Thor back to Asgard, but he’s got the day off and he’s feeling too oppressed by the surroundings of the Tower and so he forces himself off the couch, throws on an old tee shirt and a pair of ripped jeans and climbs the familiar path of stairs. He makes it to his usual place – the edge of the overhang, just far back enough that he knows he can get away with feeling confident about not actually slipping over the edge – and stands with his bare toes pressed into the ground while patting down an old pack of American Spirits he had found hidden in one of his mission bags.

It’s after ten on a Saturday, and he doesn’t see Natasha in the bed or around the Tower when he wakes up, and so he figures she’s out doing her own thing as she has been for the past few weeks. Still, he’s not entirely shocked when he hears the start of footsteps behind him, the soft thump of a person’s weight that he would know like the back of his hand.

“Thought you quit smoking,” she says conversationally, edging up next to him. He closes his eyes briefly as he raises his lighter, but doesn’t move.

“Me too,” he says dully, exhaling a grey cloud into the skyline. Natasha purses her lips as if she’s going to respond and then apparently decides better of it, lifting the cigarette from his hand and taking a drag.

“You don’t come up here anymore,” she observes, passing the lit stick back to him, and he shrugs, looking down at his feet.

“I don’t like to be reminded of certain things.”

“That’s not a reason to avoid life,” Natasha responds candidly, and he meets her eyes at that, a mutual understanding settling somewhere inside the green that stares into his grey.

“I heard you’ve been working at the coffee shop,” she continues, and the pack of cigarettes she pulls out of her own pocket surprises him more than what he thinks she’s probably known for a longer time than she’ll ever admit to.

“Yeah?” he asks tentatively, taking a few steps back and sitting down on the roof, leaning back on his elbows with his knees up. Natasha nods, fishing a purple BIC lighter out of her pocket.

“Yes. And I heard you make a mean latte as well.” Half of her words are obscured by the cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth, but he doesn’t miss the smirking tone that he’s become so accustomed to picking up on like it’s a tell of his own.

“Thought you quit smoking,” he says finally as she drops down next to him, and Natasha shrugs.

“Me too.”

There’s another stretch of silence, this one longer than before, and Clint uses the moment to scan the landscape, trying to pinpoint the exact location of the building he shot from before the top of it got more or less blown to bits.

“So you didn’t want to tell me, why?” She turns her head, catching his eye. “Because you were worried that I would think you were stupid or something for making coffee?”

“Or something,” Clint mutters, crushing the butt of the cigarette into the ground, avoiding her gaze. “Turns out that I can’t even do that. I can’t make a goddamn coffee drink, and I can’t shoot, and I can’t be trusted by my peers to be in the field…what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Mmmm.” Natasha makes a noise as she blows out a breath of smoke. “In my experience, that’s why it’s usually good to have a partner.”

“But you haven’t been here,” Clint says, the words coming out a little harsher than he means them to. She flinches, but doesn’t move, and, he notices, doesn’t refute his words. “You haven’t been here and Tony hasn’t been here, and _none of you have been here_ except for my goddamn shrink, and no offense, but he’s not exactly the easiest person to talk to.”

Natasha remains quiet through his tirade, and the longer she goes without speaking, he starts to wonder if he’s upset her without meaning to, despite the fact that the words are the some of the most truthful things he’s allowed himself to think or say in weeks. But then she looks at him again, and he sees that her eyes are bright with unshed tears that he knows only he would be able to notice.

“They’re assigning me to Rogers for a few months. Apparently we work well together, which I’m pretty sure is the first time in my entire career that I’ve been called a team player.” She punctuates the sentence with a bitter laugh, and Clint squares his jaw, thinking of Fury’s words a few months ago.

“But it’s temporary?”

Natasha shrugs. “So they say. I like him okay, I think we’ll manage to get along. But you can bet that as soon as you’re cleared for field duty, I’ll be submitting a long and detailed explanation as to why S.H.I.E.L.D. will be, without any question, putting Strike Team: Delta back on board.”

Clint nods, unsure of how to respond. “Thanks,” he mumbles, although it seems like the wrong thing to say, like he shouldn’t thank someone for taking care of him in the way that they tend to, all unconditional and respectful and just doing things because it’s normal, because it’s natural, because it’s what you do when someone is more than your best friend and even more than your partner. Natasha sighs.

“Look, Clint…it hasn’t been all that easy on me, either.”

“No?” he asks a little resentfully, thinking of the way she’s seemingly blended back into her role at S.H.I.E.L.D., coming and going as if nothing’s happened. “You wouldn’t know it.”

Natasha shakes her head, tossing her cigarette next to her and stamping it out with her foot. “Not when I’m at work, or when I’m around the people that it matters to. But when I see the footage they keep playing on the monitors. When I hear people talking in the halls. When I come home and see that you can’t even get yourself out of bed to bother to tell me good morning or goodnight.” She leans into him, letting her cheek rest against his shoulder, her breath a soft itch against his neck. She smells like a combination of dusty ash and the mango-infused shampoo that he picked up for her once in the airport during a stopover in Madrid (that she swore she would never use but then started using without question after the events of New York), a strange combination of familiarity and the unknown.

“What are you saying?” he asks tiredly, rubbing a hand across his eyes. She catches his fingers, sitting up, hair falling into her face as her features take on a more serious look.

“I’m saying that whether you make coffee or whether you shoot an arrow or whether you sit at S.H.I.E.L.D. and do paperwork, you’re not worthless, Clint Barton.” She throws the pack of cigarettes in his face before getting up, brushing the dirt from the rooftop off of her jeans.

“So stop acting like it.”

 

***

 

_So stop acting like it._

Easier said than done, he knows, but anyone would tell him that, Natasha included. Nonetheless, he continues to show up for work and his skills start to improve enough that they let him learn how to make the more expensive and complicated drinks (though admittedly, rush hour crowds that threaten his lack of control make him more than a little anxious).

He keeps his low profile, even with the fact that he knows people are aware of how he’s spending his time, and then one day, two weeks into September, he’s staring down at the cash register trying to figure out correct change for a customer and not bothering to pay attention to the moving line in front of him.

“Can I help you?” he asks out of habit when he finally gets the pennies and nickels sorted out, and when a woman’s voice says yes, he jerks his face upwards to meet Natasha’s eyes, the top corner of her lip pulling itself into a barely visible smirk.

“Yes, actually.”

She’s just come from work, he can tell, having changed into the casual clothing she keeps in her locker, her gun hanging loosely by her side and covered by a short green jacket that’s slightly billowy around the ends. She reaches for her wallet as she eyes the board in front of him, removing her credit card and handing it over.

“I’d like a non-fat skim latte, please.”

Clint hesitates for a split second, holding her gaze, and then starts to smile as he grabs a cup from the counter, making a few markings on the side before handing it off to the girl on his right, taking her card with a bit of a flourish.

“One non-fat skim latte, coming right up.”


End file.
